time to get serious...

i apologise if this bores everyone else, but i try to write for myself mostly.

MWF
9ish am: good morning sheila! breakfast, news.
10 am: english/city politics reading
11 am: get dressed, errands, emails, snail mail
12 noon: study time and lunchtime!
2 pm: japanese class
3-5 pm: M. city politics studying W. english seminar F. is for fun
In between hours: Dinner, Skype, lolling about waiting for dinner to digest
9 pm-12 midnight: homework, shower, dessert
12.30: relax, sleep!

TTh
9ish am: awake! breakfast, news
10.30 am: city politics lecture
12 noon: japanese class
1 pm: lunch!
2.30 pm: T. groceries Th. library time for work
In between hours: Skype, cook dinner, dinner
9 pm-12 midnight: homework, shower, snack
12:30: relax, sleep~


senioritis has struck and for the past two weeks, i've been doing the bare minimum to stay afloat in classes. not good especially when ox is asking for first-class equivalent which is a GPA of 3.8 or above. i'm incredibly paranoid... what if city politics is a disaster and i get a C, in which case, i am in trouble. actually feeling really stressed about it even though i should be fine with a B for city politics... but still, the amount of work to be done for revision and the final paper is terrifying. this is crazy; i'm a senior, and for the first time in a long time i feel like the bad, naughty student who is falling behind everyone in class :(.

why is it that the older we get, the lazier we become? i don't understand. is it the the increasing amount of freedom and choice we have in terms of interesting things we could be doing with our time? are we more easily distracted in the year 2010 than in the year 2005? how the heck was i able to focus so well for the IB years and dutifully do coursework and exam revision AND volunteer work, volleyball, PAL, yearbook, literary magazine, SAT classes? it's not like i slept more or ate more in high school, so i am just confounded by questions pertaining to sheer energy: where did it come from and how could i replenish it so quickly.

(actually, i can kinda answer that question. in high school, we lived at home so we were fed and taken care of. whenever we were worn out, we always had family right there for support. oh and it was also a lot warmer in Asia so we consume less energy in homeostatic reactions)

stress... ... so that's why i implemented the above schedule a la Cambridge days. part of me secretly enjoys fooling everyone into thinking that i study hard, but after awhile that gets tiring so i should just get on with and do it. i can salvage the city politics grade if i put my heart into it. i just need to invoke the whole Easter Term attitude and WORK HARD. if last year i could study from the English Faculty Library's opening hours 'til its closing hours, and keep up that kind of studying for a month and then write my dissertation after exams, i can do (almost) anything. okay. i can do this. i know we're supposed to enjoy the remainder of our undergraduate life, but i have 2 free weeks in May, and then the whole summer to enjoy, so i must sacrifice a bit of time now.

maybe i should do the bandanna thing... hahaha.

lapses in judgment

i feel guilty for last night's post. my life is so wonderful and i am incredibly lucky... i should never ever forget that. :)

seven is a good number // a self indulgent entry

it's time to channel all my energy and heart into studies and life here at brown. since spring break, i've been floating around either out of happiness or confusion, and now it's time to descend back to earth. i feel a little sad tonight but i don't know why; maybe it's that feeling of stepping off that rainbow and realizing that on the ground there are so many small earthly anxieties and disappointments to deal with... trying to get over these. no person or event deserves to make me feel sad.

so aside from that classes are fine (except i got a B on city politics midterm, yikes). japanese and english are both sailing along smoothly; actually, i've been lulled into complacency because those two subjects are going well. my English professor was very kind, pulling me aside during seminar break to congratulate me and also to tell me about the opportunities in the seminar to work with poetry. this memory makes me smile because i was touched, and i find it a little funny that he would assume that one piece of work could be so self-defining. i guess english allows its students to imbue parts of themselves into the work, much like drama and literary arts. we eventually carve out our spheres of interest and attempt to become specialists.

this is all self-indulgent contemplation :), but i do have to seriously start thinking about my focus areas for graduate study. in the statement of purpose, i only listed novelists because prose is more in line (no pun intended, hahahaha!) with my potential dissertation topic. but i have always loved poetry. it's condensed hence a little easier :P, it allows you to walk away with memory-friendly lines inscribed in your heart, and one gets to talk about things like half-rhymes and chiasmas and rhythm. actually, it was a poem we read in grade 9 which made me love literature in the first place.... Thomas Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard'. (Gray coincidentally also went to Pembroke College!)

some friends may have heard me say that i went into English over a boy (half true - oh he eventually went to Oxford to read English. he also turned out to be gay), but it was ultimately Gray's poem which pulled me in. after i received the news about Oxford, one of the first things i did after getting home from the mail room was to read through the poems which have inspired me throughout senior year: Donne's A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts and Stephen Edgar's The Secret Life of Books. please look these up when you have time. the last one is the most accessible, the second one only makes sense if you read up on Ovid's story of the fall of Icarus and look at the painting Breughal, and the first... well, let's just say that i have been kept sane by reading Donne's poem about once every two weeks. it's a poem which almost makes me happy that i am geographically far away from loved ones.

//
* an amusing moment: today i asked WS how much he missed me, and he indicated with his thumb and index finger a distance of about three centimeters. :( that little?, i asked. (i had expected him to fling out his arms and say THISS much). he smiled and said, did i tell you the scale? :) and then what could have been a romantic interlude quickly became a lesson in what nanometers are. they are apparently one thousandth of a micrometer which is one thousandth of a millimeter which is one thousandth of a meter. yay, so missing is a constant, and sometimes rather painfully so, but i guess hopefully one day it will go away.

22nd birthday!

all right, so i didn't wake up with that fluttery, magical feeling in the stomach, but it was such a GORGEOUS DAY! ohhh why is it that spring descends upon the campus on march 7th every year? sigh :). it was just too good to be true.

i am so so so grateful to everyone who sent their well-wishes. feeling particularly loved this year :). Tn and Jn baked a carrot cake for me on friday, went out with housemates + Js for dinner on sat, suite lunch at federal hill today, and lazy afternon out on the fire escape. ahh the presents this year were all so beautiful, and many, very useful. and the cards! teared while reading some, cackled maniacally over others. i also love the abundance of flower themed - especially DAISY themed things... ;) ahh you guys know me so well. thank you! <3

must continue being healthy and happy!

neko

cats get a bad rep. think the Siamese cats in Lady & The Tramp, the mice-chasing, spiteful Lucifer (of all names!) in Cinderella, and the whole black cat omen. *edit: the japanese even use the word 'neko' 猫 (cat) in their expression 'neko baba' 猫ばば which means embezzlement, pocketing, stealing!! oh the associations...

my mom has also conditioned me to dislike cats: we've always seen them as cunning, snobby, self-centered, and unsociable - but this is such a human-centric view. dogs on the other hand... well my Koaty loved my family and me so much... so loyal, overwhelmingly affectionate, energetic, intelligent.... well cats are intelligent too i guess but they express it as outwardly. then my mom and i have always joked amongst ourselves that if ever our house were on fire, dogs would probably bark and rouse us from our sleep and drag us by our shirttails to the nearest exit. cats, however, would probably miao quietly and then slink away whispering to themselves, "let's leave quietly". hahahaha.

anyway, to reverse such ill-feelings towards cats, i have been watching these japanese cat videos. they are surprisingly stress-relieving and i seriously think there must be heart/blood-pressure health related benefits to watching these feline cuties interact with each other.

neko no massaji:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgcGu1R2M-s&feature=related

neko cuddling and grooming another one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQTAqMVl1oU&feature=related

calming right? :)